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704: How I Discovered Happiness Through a Lot of Adversity – Dr. Kevin Groth

We all want to avoid hardship. But hard times can lead to a more fulfilling and joyful life. To share how adversity was important to his happiness, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Kevin Groth to highlight the important lessons and habits he learned that transformed his life. With the right mindset, adversity is the path to happiness! To hear how you can discover your happiest self, listen to Episode 704 of The Best Practices Show!

Learn More About Dr. Groth:

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Episode Resources:

Main Takeaways:

  • Learn to say no.
  • Set your vision and core values.
  • Get in the habit of positive thinking.
  • Take better care of your mind and body.
  • Surround yourself with supportive people.
  • Don't judge yourself at your lowest moments.
  • Simplify the things that are bogging you down.
  • No one should work more than 200 days a year.

Quotes:

“There are ups, and there are downs. What's wrong with the down? I'm going to try and hopefully express that the down isn't bad. The down drives you when you fall. That's where you learn the most. That's why the last two years, I fell hard in almost every facet of my life, and I'm proud of that because I can stand here now having gotten out of that and I am a completely different person than I was two years ago when I was here. I'm humbled. I'm more compassionate. I'm more real and raw and genuine with what I do and how I do things, and far more intimate with every relationship that I have.” (4:39—5:18)  

“It’s like the analogy of a forest fire. Those happen sometimes naturally, and it's important because when things burn in a forest, it takes out all the weeds and all the stuff that clutters that forest and allows for new growth to take place. A forest won't thrive unless there is some burn. And you’ve got to sit in that burn. I think as dentists, we are so averse to anything failing. We don't want that crown to fail. We don't want that procedure, or that patient relationship, or anything — we want to fix it as fast as possible. Sometimes, you’ve got to sit in that. You’ve got to sit in that for a long time.” (6:10—6:44) ­

“We worked hard to simplify my life because I had gotten so big and so chaos driven that I had to really rein things back and come back to the point of simplicity. And simplicity is not easy to achieve. But when you have it, [you're] not ever letting go of that.” (10:10—10:30)

“I've come to learn, especially through ACT Dental, that nobody should work more than 200 days a year.” (12:04—12:09)

“Look at your schedule and get down to at least a 200-days-a-year schedule. I emphasize 180, if you can. Every year, keep cutting, keep cutting, and keep cutting. You'll make more. But then, sometimes people will say, ‘Well, what about my team? They're not going to like not working those days.’ Great. I took all my team and put them on salary.” (14:26—14:44)

“People that work for me want to know, ‘I'm getting paid this much every single week or month or year.’ There's no, ‘Oh my gosh. The doctor took off a day here. Now, I'm not going to get paid,’ or, ‘The doctor is sick, and I can't go in. Now, I'm not going to get paid for that.’ They shouldn't be punished for that. And on top of that, as we keep cutting down days, they get the benefit of the days off too. I closed my office today to come here. They're still getting paid. That's a benefit because now they're saying, ‘Wow, I have more of a relaxed lifestyle. I have more balance too. He preaches this, and now he's living that too.’ If we make more money taking days off, they should get the benefit of getting paid just as much or more every year too. It's an easy thing to do.” (15:11—15:54)

“We used to work Wednesday nights with my dad [until] 8:00 p.m. And then, you could get home at like 8:45, and then you eat something, and you fall asleep, and then you get back to work the next day. You feel like you live at the office. I know a lot of people that work 7:00 to 7:00, and that's crazy. So, my hours — I don't hate lunches. I hate lunches because you end up working through lunch, or you sit there and you're not doing anything. And it's rejuvenating, but it's never rejuvenating. So, for me, I said we're not doing any lunches and we're going to go straight through.” (18:08—18:38)

"I like my team taking ownership of everything, so we came up with these hours ourselves together . . . And we've changed it along the way. So, for the last seven years, we've always constantly changed our schedule around. But they jump at every single change because it's better for them. They love that. It might be early for them. Great. But at the same point, let's knock it out and get done with the day. Perfect. So, I'm a huge fan of that. And now, you're starting to formulate how you want to practice.” (19:08—19:35)

“I had a patient conversation last week. She's a mom. Her sons are like 13 and 15. She goes, ‘Would you extend your hours for a late night or work a Saturday or something like that every now and then?’ I said no, because I don't have to be everyone's dentist, and I'm good with that. I don't want to work for those dollars. I don't want to work for the people that need me during those days, and I'm fine with that.” (21:11—21:31)

“I realized I'm done being a people pleaser because I adapted myself to please some other person. That usually was for my parents, for my friends, some people, or employees, and I changed who I was and what I needed for their benefit.” (21:51—22:11)

“The other thing about your practice is you’ve got to name the procedures that you do. I don't like doing endo. I don't like doing extractions. I don't like doing removable. I don't like doing kids. And my schedule is so busy already. So, I sit there and do all these things that I actually enjoy doing as opposed to doing the things that I get upset about or worried that don't work and it's unpredictable for me. And that's cool because now you're starting to design a vision for who you are for your practice, and that becomes the clarity which you carry forward with your team and what you do on a daily basis.” (23:57—24:27)

“When I started working with ACT, Christina had me do a vision. I presented this to my team, and half of them said, ‘It will never work.’ That half is not with me anymore. But the half that was on the side with me saying, ‘I love this. Sign me up,’ they're the ones that still are in my corner here. They've been the most important people on my side every single day. They motivated me to keep going the last couple of years. They showed up for me, so I had to show up for them.” (24:37—25:09)

“I am so big into team culture, and it all goes down to the core value emphasis that you put on me. And I said, ‘Kirk, that's total bullshit.’ I remember that phone call. You were like, ‘Yeah, you need to get back to your core values.’ I'm like, ‘I'm so tired of that little cliche that you throw out there.’ But it's so true, because the people that don't have the same core values as you are not going to work for your practice — and they're not bad people. There’s nothing wrong with them, but it just simply is not working for you.” (25:11—25:40)

“For me, how I know it's the right fit is, what is my gut saying about that person? If it's not right, if it doesn't feel great, eventually it weeds itself out naturally or whatever it may be. But I love my team. I love my people on my team. I can say that wholeheartedly, and I will do anything for every single one of those seven people that work for me because I'm in this moment of appreciation and bliss — and I will never, ever, ever get away from that.” (27:59—28:27)

“My team will do anything for me, and I'll do anything for them. If they come to me and say, ‘You need to be better about this,’ it's an open invite because we love and appreciate each other. When you have that type of culture and identity, you can be critical because they know it's coming from a good place.” (29:42—29:56)

“You have to improve yourself in order to be happy. I think the biggest thing for me was that I was in such a rough place myself. When you're in a rough place, you're going to have these reactions or [inability to] handle things the way you absolutely should. People that are parents out there know this position because sometimes the kid will do something that's not really that bad, but you just blow your top off. Not that you're screaming and yelling, but your reaction to that is like, ‘Well, they didn't really do anything bad. Why did I react like that?’ because you weren't in a good place to take on the kid and their response to whatever they were doing.” (30:24—31:05)

“Now, the other end is true too. If you're in a good place and something happens, you might be able to take that on and handle that emotionally that's in a much better place. And as a parent, nothing is better than showing your kid how to respond in a good manner, right? Because now, you're modeling behavior that they should be able to do and learn for the rest of their life. It's no different in your practice. You might have some crazy patients. If you're in a bad place, it's not a good thing to handle those crazy patients.” (31:05—31:32)

“You’ve got to start taking care of yourself. So, you’ve got to get better at taking care of yourself from a sleep aspect, your diet, fitness, and how you're managing your stress. All those things are components that compound on each other. If you don't sleep well, you're not going to have the energy to work out. If you're not working out, you're going to be more stressed. If you're stressed, you're not going to eat well. If you're not going to do all those things, you're not going to sleep well. So, it's that cycle. But if you actually start changing little things, you can reverse that cycle and be better. So, if you sleep a little bit more, then you have the energy to work out. You're going to start eating better. If you eat better, you're not going to have as much stress. If you’re not going to stress, you're going to sleep better. So, all those things tie into each other.” (33:38—34:21)

“[Dentists] want perfection. ‘I want to label everything, and I want to come up with a plan, and I want to stick to this plan.’ Then, all of a sudden, life happens and, ‘Now the plan is totally effed, and now I have to start over again.’ You don't have to start over. Just go back to where you were and keep moving along that journey, because if you get 80% there, you're so much better off than zero every single time. That 80% compounds and eventually gets to a better place, and you're in the mid-nineties to high nineties, eventually, if you keep trying that.” (35:08—35:38)

“I realized the value of saying no to everything . . . My wife and I have this thing. If it's not a hell yes, it’s a hell no.” (35:56—36:04)

“It's so hard to make amends sometimes. It's so hard to say, ‘I'm sorry.’ It's so hard to say, ‘I messed up,’ and ask for forgiveness, or forgive yourself. And ultimately, that allows you to now sit there and do the dishes and be empty. It's so cool because, all of a sudden, now you're sitting there like, ‘Oh. Maybe I should listen to a podcast or something. I'm kind of bored,’ because [you're] not ruminating on those things of guilt and regret in all these different ways that torture you.” (38:54—39:23)

“If you live long enough, you're going to upset some people. We're not perfect. We're not robots. We're going to make some people upset. And they're probably not thinking about you as much as you're thinking about them, and that's what it's going to be. If it is something, then they'll reach out to you, or you reach out to them and you make amends with it, and you move forward. But if they're not going to have that happen, or if you're not going to do that, let it go. Letting it go is a huge portion of that too.” (41:11—41:36)

“I'm one of four kids. I was the oldest child, and I never got a lot of that rah-rah, “good job” type of thing. So, my whole life, I would seek out other people who really, really talked me up. The COVID-19 conference was great for me, but it also was very, very bad for me because I had a lot of these people that were high up in this industry saying, ‘You're a star. You're great. Great job, great job.’ I fueled on that, and that was my high. I loved it. I felt so well about myself, and I had this confidence, this invincibility, that I could do anything. And every decision I made after that was based on that overconfident nature, ‘I made it, and I'm going to go bigger. I'm going to go bigger and get better.’ Ultimately, it collapsed. And that's cool. I failed. I failed hard. I did everything I could to climb out of that, and I failed even more from that. I'm now in this place where it's full circle that I'm in a better place, and I can honestly say I loved it.” (42:04—43:12)

“The other thing I wish I would have done is journal everything from this moment . . . We never know what we're going through, and we never know the journey we're going to go into, right? So, ultimately, it would have been so cool to look back on all these moments and been like, ‘Oh, I forgot about those little things.’” (43:49—44:09)

“There came a point where I was like, ‘I'm done thinking negatively. I am done expecting negative things to happen to me because negative things are coming my way because I'm thinking about when the next thing happens.’ You cannot control when that thing happens. I still have negative things come to me all the time . . . But I don't take them as negative, or as insulting, or as woe-is-me or a victimized nature. It's going to be there to teach me a lesson, and I'm expecting great things to come from those lessons. And that's what life is about.” (45:40—46:15)

“There are going to be adversities that are going to come your way, and it was unplanned and unexpected. But you become resilient through positive thinking. That's the most important thing, is that the positivity fuels that resilience.” (46:48—47:03)

“Eventually you realize, when looking back, all those little missteps led to something better, and your future got brighter because of it. So, stop looking at it as a negative thing. Me coming out here and saying I failed so many times the last two years and I'm proud of that — I love it. And I can sit here in a full evolution of a being, coming back to Milwaukee and saying I love the person I am today because of all the things I did wrong. It's so cool.” (47:37—48:06)

“You should never judge anybody or yourself in your lowest moments. It's all about how you pick yourself up and how you learn from those moments. I think it's a huge component of who we are as people, is the failure.” (49:38—49:49)

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

4:06 Dr. Groth’s journey to happiness.

5:51 Have a strong support network.

9:59 The happiest people live the simplest lives.

10:40 Don't work more than 200 days a year.

14:52 Simplify the things that are bogging you down.

15:54 Change how you do payroll.

17:22 Change your work hours.

21:32 You don't need to be everyone’s dentist.

22:11 Write down your problems to start finding solutions.

24:27 Establish your vision and core values.

30:13 Improve yourself to be happy.

33:35 Take better care of your body.

34:36 Don't strive for perfection.

35:42 The value of saying no.

37:35 Make amends to clear your mind.

41:37 Keep your ego in check.

43:49 Start journaling.

45:05 Get in the habit of positive thinking.

49:33 Last thoughts.

Dr. Kevin Groth Bio:

Dr. Kevin Groth’s primary goal is for every person to walk out of his office knowing that they received the highest-quality, most personalized care possible. Dentistry is more than just a profession for Dr. Groth. He sees every patient as an extension of his own family. When you are in his chair, you’ll always be treated well. 

Dr. Groth’s favorite part of being a dentist is that every day and every patient is different. He loves the variety of people he gets to meet and procedures he performs to help patients maintain their smiles. 

Since graduating from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, Dr. Groth has been recognized locally by Hour Detroit Magazine as a Top Dentist, and nationally as a Top Doc. As a passionate dentist who wants to provide the best care for his patients, he pursues continuing education through The Dawson Academy, serves on the executive board of the Periodontal Bunting Society, and is the Assistant Clinical Director of the Society of Comprehensive Dentists. He has also served as an adjunct clinical faculty member at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry.
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